Some Interesting Facts about Alox

[ThundahBeagle]

*ahem*
Hmmmm....mi, mi, mi, mi, miiii.

Yodel - eh - HEEEE - hooooo!

Yep. I'm ready to go.

[Borg]

I had always believed the Red Cross took their cross symbol directly from the Swiss flag as recognition of the Geneva convention, they just inverted the colours so i'm not so sure its intended to be a religious symbol, it is generally seen as such though, hence the Red Crescent.
I'm guessing the Swiss flag originated from battle flags but then you would wonder why there would be a cross on a battle flag..i'm pretty sure that would be for religious reasons, perhaps we will never know
If you guys are chartering a bus to go to Switzerland save me a seat 

[pomsbz]

I had always believed the Red Cross took their cross symbol directly from the Swiss flag as recognition of the Geneva convention, they just inverted the colours so i'm not so sure its intended to be a religious symbol, it is generally seen as such though, hence the Red Crescent.
I'm guessing the Swiss flag originated from battle flags but then you would wonder why there would be a cross on a battle flag..i'm pretty sure that would be for religious reasons, perhaps we will never know
If you guys are chartering a bus to go to Switzerland save me a seat 

Private helicopter, please!

[pomsbz]

*ahem*
Hmmmm....mi, mi, mi, mi, miiii.

Yodel - eh - HEEEE - hooooo!

Yep. I'm ready to go.

The internal train system in Zurich airport has a soundtrack going as it runs. You hear tinkling cow bells, a yoddle or two and then........long pause then........a very loud and distinct cow moo-ing. Honestly I'm sure there's more to be proud of in Switzerland than a cow!  People couldn't work out why I always burst out laughing at that point (been through there many times). Why not have a soundtrack of rifle shooting to celebrate the country with the highest gun ownership in Europe coupled with some of the least crime?

[El Corkscrew]

From Jaya's link:

Smooth Alox scales
We all know and love the Alox scales with their trademark ribbed finish and bright colors. But in the 1990s, Victorinox released a 91mm Alox Officers knife with blue scales exclusively for the Dutch Army. This was actually the only 91 mm Officers knife ever released with Alox scales and even more unusual, the scales themselves were completely smooth. Soon we found that they scratched and marked quicker than the traditional ribbed Alox scales, so production of these knives was discontinued. Today they are quite a collector’s item.

Wow. This is a weird factoid, because a lot of is it fairly inaccurate or misleading.
.

- They discontinued them because they discovered the smooth alox scratches easily? Seriously? Victorinox has made knives with smooth alox handles from at least the late 1930s (in the 84mm Pocket Pal/Secretary line) and from the 1960s-1980s with the smooth alox 84mm advertising knives. I think its safe to assume they knew how easily they scratched well before 1990.

That's what I was thinking... 

You should have written this blurb, JB! 

[pomsbz]

From Jaya's link:

Smooth Alox scales
We all know and love the Alox scales with their trademark ribbed finish and bright colors. But in the 1990s, Victorinox released a 91mm Alox Officers knife with blue scales exclusively for the Dutch Army. This was actually the only 91 mm Officers knife ever released with Alox scales and even more unusual, the scales themselves were completely smooth. Soon we found that they scratched and marked quicker than the traditional ribbed Alox scales, so production of these knives was discontinued. Today they are quite a collector’s item.

Wow. This is a weird factoid, because a lot of is it fairly inaccurate or misleading.
.

- They discontinued them because they discovered the smooth alox scratches easily? Seriously? Victorinox has made knives with smooth alox handles from at least the late 1930s (in the 84mm Pocket Pal/Secretary line) and from the 1960s-1980s with the smooth alox 84mm advertising knives. I think its safe to assume they knew how easily they scratched well before 1990.

That's what I was thinking... 

You should have written this blurb, JB! 

JB on the team to teach Victorinox their history!

[Syph007]

From Jaya's link:

Smooth Alox scales
We all know and love the Alox scales with their trademark ribbed finish and bright colors. But in the 1990s, Victorinox released a 91mm Alox Officers knife with blue scales exclusively for the Dutch Army. This was actually the only 91 mm Officers knife ever released with Alox scales and even more unusual, the scales themselves were completely smooth. Soon we found that they scratched and marked quicker than the traditional ribbed Alox scales, so production of these knives was discontinued. Today they are quite a collector’s item.

Wow. This is a weird factoid, because a lot of is it fairly inaccurate or misleading.
.

- They discontinued them because they discovered the smooth alox scratches easily? Seriously? Victorinox has made knives with smooth alox handles from at least the late 1930s (in the 84mm Pocket Pal/Secretary line) and from the 1960s-1980s with the smooth alox 84mm advertising knives. I think its safe to assume they knew how easily they scratched well before 1990.

That's what I was thinking... 

You should have written this blurb, JB! 

Same hardness of anodize so same scratching ability, its just that on textured (especially colored) you dont notice it as much.

I have no doubt that jazzbass knows more about SAKs than anyone working at Vic today.   Its not the first time Ive seen something written I didnt agree with.

While we are on the subject, I used to think that none of the liners on a standard cellidor were anodized, but the liner adjacent to the blade for sure is clear anodized (you can tell with conductivity test).  No other liners are, but why did they do just that one liner and still do it currently?  All current cellidor blade liners are indeed alox.

[Don Pablo]

While we are on the subject, I used to think that none of the liners on a standard cellidor were anodized, but the liner adjacent to the blade for sure is clear anodized (you can tell with conductivity test).  No other liners are, but why did they do just that one liner and still do it currently?  All current cellidor blade liners are indeed alox.

I didn't know that.
Really odd. 

[Syph007]

While we are on the subject, I used to think that none of the liners on a standard cellidor were anodized, but the liner adjacent to the blade for sure is clear anodized (you can tell with conductivity test).  No other liners are, but why did they do just that one liner and still do it currently?  All current cellidor blade liners are indeed alox.

I didn't know that.
Really odd. 

The only thing I can think of is the blade steel is different than the rest of the tool's steel and there is an adverse reaction between the blade and bare aluminum liner.  Although that cant be it either since the outer liner the scale snaps onto is not anodized.

[ThundahBeagle]

I had always believed the Red Cross took their cross symbol directly from the Swiss flag as recognition of the Geneva convention, they just inverted the colours so i'm not so sure its intended to be a religious symbol, it is generally seen as such though, hence the Red Crescent.
I'm guessing the Swiss flag originated from battle flags but then you would wonder why there would be a cross on a battle flag..i'm pretty sure that would be for religious reasons, perhaps we will never know
If you guys are chartering a bus to go to Switzerland save me a seat 

Private helicopter, please!

Um, Lear Jet please!

[ThundahBeagle]

I had always believed the Red Cross took their cross symbol directly from the Swiss flag as recognition of the Geneva convention, they just inverted the colours so i'm not so sure its intended to be a religious symbol, it is generally seen as such though, hence the Red Crescent.
I'm guessing the Swiss flag originated from battle flags but then you would wonder why there would be a cross on a battle flag..i'm pretty sure that would be for religious reasons, perhaps we will never know
If you guys are chartering a bus to go to Switzerland save me a seat 

By that, yes, at the first Geneva convention. Original red cross was started by a man in Geneva whose family was indeed very religious and also was influential in society, while expecting social work to be a part of daily life.

So he was indeed a devout Christian. Durant, I think his name was.

He took it upon himself to start helping troops on both sides of a battle he witnessed in Italy in the mid 1800's and soon thereafter the Red Cross was born

[MiniChamp]

This is my first real post here on the MTO forum. I collect SAKs and I'm very interested in their evolution. I know this place for quite a few years and I learned a lot from reading posts here. Although I usually prefer to just read and learn, this thread touches something that I researched a little bit (by observing the SAKs in my collection), so it seems appropriate to point out what I know.

While we are on the subject, I used to think that none of the liners on a standard cellidor were anodized, but the liner adjacent to the blade for sure is clear anodized (you can tell with conductivity test).  No other liners are, but why did they do just that one liner and still do it currently?  All current cellidor blade liners are indeed alox.

I didn't know that.
Really odd. 

According to my observations, it's indeed true that recent (since some point in the late 1980's) regular-line 91mm Victorinox SAKs have exactly one anodized liner as Syph007 describes. It's the internal liner of the blades layer (namely, the central liner on a Spartan). The full picture, however, is more complex and is part the SAK evolution.

Victorinox used to anodize all aluminum liners of their 91mm and 84mm SAKs since around their official switch to aluminum liners in the very early 1950's (I'm not sure what was before then) to some point in the early 1970's (1973?). Then they completely stopped anodizing the liners of SAKs in the Elinox/Economy/Ecoline line. This change may have coincided (at least roughly) with the other changes that were made to this line around that time (change of tang stamps from big ELINOX over a crossbow to small ELINOX-SWITZERLAND-STAINLESS-ROSTFREI, change of corkscrew to a special economy version, change to polished openers, etc.). It persists to this day, so that except for the use of nylon scales, current ecoline/II versions of 91mm Victorinox SAKs differ from their regular-line versions also by lacking the anodized liner.

Anodizing of all liners persisted for regular-line SAKs until sometime in the late 1980's (1988-89?), at which time Victorinox stopped anodizing all of their liners except for the above mentioned single liner that still gets anodized on regular-line 91mm SAKs.

The next change involved only 84mm knives. They stopped anodizing all liners on all 84mm knives, so that current 84mm SAKs have no anodized liners at all. I don't really know when this happened. Possibly 2005, but for all I know it may have been several years earlier or later (I simply don't have enough 84mm SAKs to determine this at present).

As far as I can tell, Wenger never anodized any liners in their SAKs. This seems to persist for the Victorinox Delemont line.

I have no idea what happens with other sizes (like 111mm) of Victorinox knives that have some aluminum liners.

Finally, while I don't really know why they keep anodizing the particular single liner that they do on 91mm SAKs, my personal theory is that this is due to this liner having an exposed portion (next to the corkscrew/Phillips SD) that is visible and also tends to get easily scratched. Anodizing the corresponding liner usually helps to make this exposed portion look a bit nicer on used SAKs.

[Don Pablo]

This is my first real post here on the MTO forum. I collect SAKs and I'm very interested in their evolution. I know this place for quite a few years and I learned a lot from reading posts here. Although I usually prefer to just read and learn, this thread touches something that I researched a little bit (by observing the SAKs in my collection), so it seems appropriate to point out what I know.

While we are on the subject, I used to think that none of the liners on a standard cellidor were anodized, but the liner adjacent to the blade for sure is clear anodized (you can tell with conductivity test).  No other liners are, but why did they do just that one liner and still do it currently?  All current cellidor blade liners are indeed alox.

I didn't know that.
Really odd. 

According to my observations, it's indeed true that recent (since some point in the late 1980's) regular-line 91mm Victorinox SAKs have exactly one anodized liner as Syph007 describes. It's the internal liner of the blades layer (namely, the central liner on a Spartan). The full picture, however, is more complex and is part the SAK evolution.

Victorinox used to anodize all aluminum liners of their 91mm and 84mm SAKs since around their official switch to aluminum liners in the very early 1950's (I'm not sure what was before then) to some point in the early 1970's (1973?). Then they completely stopped anodizing the liners of SAKs in the Elinox/Economy/Ecoline line. This change may have coincided (at least roughly) with the other changes that were made to this line around that time (change of tang stamps from big ELINOX over a crossbow to small ELINOX-SWITZERLAND-STAINLESS-ROSTFREI, change of corkscrew to a special economy version, change to polished openers, etc.). It persists to this day, so that except for the use of nylon scales, current ecoline/II versions of 91mm Victorinox SAKs differ from their regular-line versions also by lacking the anodized liner.

Anodizing of all liners persisted for regular-line SAKs until sometime in the late 1980's (1988-89?), at which time Victorinox stopped anodizing all of their liners except for the above mentioned single liner that still gets anodized on regular-line 91mm SAKs.

The next change involved only 84mm knives. They stopped anodizing all liners on all 84mm knives, so that current 84mm SAKs have no anodized liners at all. I don't really know when this happened. Possibly 2005, but for all I know it may have been several years earlier or later (I simply don't have enough 84mm SAKs to determine this at present).

As far as I can tell, Wenger never anodized any liners in their SAKs. This seems to persist for the Victorinox Delemont line.

I have no idea what happens with other sizes (like 111mm) of Victorinox knives that have some aluminum liners.

Finally, while I don't really know why they keep anodizing the particular single liner that they do on 91mm SAKs, my personal theory is that this is due to this liner having an exposed portion (next to the corkscrew/Phillips SD) that is visible and also tends to get easily scratched. Anodizing the corresponding liner usually helps to make this exposed portion look a bit nicer on used SAKs.

Welcome to MTO! 

And that is an awesome first post. 
My hats off to you.

[El Corkscrew]

+1  Thanks and welcome,MiniChamp   

[gustophersmob]

Welcome to 

I like your theory as to why the one liner remains anodized.  Make sense to me.

Anyone know what are the liners on the 93mm alox knives? Are they nickel-silver?

[ThePeacent]

be very welcome to the forum!   
  is proud to have you aboard

By the wealth of info you have found and gathered I think you'll fit very well in here 

[Syph007]

This is my first real post here on the MTO forum. I collect SAKs and I'm very interested in their evolution. I know this place for quite a few years and I learned a lot from reading posts here. Although I usually prefer to just read and learn, this thread touches something that I researched a little bit (by observing the SAKs in my collection), so it seems appropriate to point out what I know.

While we are on the subject, I used to think that none of the liners on a standard cellidor were anodized, but the liner adjacent to the blade for sure is clear anodized (you can tell with conductivity test).  No other liners are, but why did they do just that one liner and still do it currently?  All current cellidor blade liners are indeed alox.

I didn't know that.
Really odd. 

According to my observations, it's indeed true that recent (since some point in the late 1980's) regular-line 91mm Victorinox SAKs have exactly one anodized liner as Syph007 describes. It's the internal liner of the blades layer (namely, the central liner on a Spartan). The full picture, however, is more complex and is part the SAK evolution.

Victorinox used to anodize all aluminum liners of their 91mm and 84mm SAKs since around their official switch to aluminum liners in the very early 1950's (I'm not sure what was before then) to some point in the early 1970's (1973?). Then they completely stopped anodizing the liners of SAKs in the Elinox/Economy/Ecoline line. This change may have coincided (at least roughly) with the other changes that were made to this line around that time (change of tang stamps from big ELINOX over a crossbow to small ELINOX-SWITZERLAND-STAINLESS-ROSTFREI, change of corkscrew to a special economy version, change to polished openers, etc.). It persists to this day, so that except for the use of nylon scales, current ecoline/II versions of 91mm Victorinox SAKs differ from their regular-line versions also by lacking the anodized liner.

Anodizing of all liners persisted for regular-line SAKs until sometime in the late 1980's (1988-89?), at which time Victorinox stopped anodizing all of their liners except for the above mentioned single liner that still gets anodized on regular-line 91mm SAKs.

The next change involved only 84mm knives. They stopped anodizing all liners on all 84mm knives, so that current 84mm SAKs have no anodized liners at all. I don't really know when this happened. Possibly 2005, but for all I know it may have been several years earlier or later (I simply don't have enough 84mm SAKs to determine this at present).

As far as I can tell, Wenger never anodized any liners in their SAKs. This seems to persist for the Victorinox Delemont line.

I have no idea what happens with other sizes (like 111mm) of Victorinox knives that have some aluminum liners.

Finally, while I don't really know why they keep anodizing the particular single liner that they do on 91mm SAKs, my personal theory is that this is due to this liner having an exposed portion (next to the corkscrew/Phillips SD) that is visible and also tends to get easily scratched. Anodizing the corresponding liner usually helps to make this exposed portion look a bit nicer on used SAKs.

Oh Right! That is the only difference from that liner to all others, its got an exposed surface instead of just edges!  Never occurred to me before but that makes sense. 

[MiniChamp]

Thanks a lot for the very warm welcome!    

[smiller43147]

Taking the thread in a slightly different direction, the business of Wenger sourcing the can opener from Vic surprised me.


I was initially skeptical at the statement that Wenger couldn't produce them because of a patent.  At least in the US when you offer something up to the military, they are free to give the design to anyone they want to produce it.  That might be different elsewhere, but as a rule armies like to ensure that they can source everything they need.


Then it occurred to me that Wenger also sold the SI to the public.

[gustophersmob]

Taking the thread in a slightly different direction, the business of Wenger sourcing the can opener from Vic surprised me.


I was initially skeptical at the statement that Wenger couldn't produce them because of a patent.  At least in the US when you offer something up to the military, they are free to give the design to anyone they want to produce it.  That might be different elsewhere, but as a rule armies like to ensure that they can source everything they need.


Then it occurred to me that Wenger also sold the SI to the public.

I'm not sure if that's accurate.  If a commercial company develops and patents a technology, and then uses that as part of a military contract, I believe they still hold the rights to that patent. I assume a commercial company can give the patent rights to the military though, but I don't know.

[El Corkscrew]

Any Swiss patent attorneys in the house?

[Don Pablo]

Any Swiss patent attorneys in the house?

Wouldn’t surprise me.
What with the diversity of people here. 

[Syem]

I had always believed the Red Cross took their cross symbol directly from the Swiss flag as recognition of the Geneva convention, they just inverted the colours so i'm not so sure its intended to be a religious symbol, it is generally seen as such though, hence the Red Crescent.
I'm guessing the Swiss flag originated from battle flags but then you would wonder why there would be a cross on a battle flag..i'm pretty sure that would be for religious reasons, perhaps we will never know
If you guys are chartering a bus to go to Switzerland save me a seat 

Henri Dunant (creator of the Red Cross) was from Geneva, which was part of Switzerland when he was born. The red cross' flag is obviously taken from the Swiss flag and the Geneva convention is just named like this because the Red Cross was based in Geneva, Henri Dunant's home town...

We are taught in school that the Swiss flag is derived from the flag of Schwyz. The story is a bit more complex than that as many cantons used this cross with their respective colors even when Schwyz was not involved. Whatever the usage and the actual "who used it first and why", the Christian heritage is obvious. I like to think that we've kept this throughout the ages as a way to unite as Christians despite the differing cantonal religious preferences. Many cantons are considered Catholic to this day while others (such as Geneva) are Protestant; this is reflected in the varying public holidays depending on the cantons (with totals in the french version).

The final nail in the cross comes from our constitution which starts by :

In the name of Almighty God!
The Swiss People and the Cantons,
mindful of their responsibility towards creation,
resolved to renew their alliance so as to strengthen liberty, democracy, independence and peace in a spirit of solidarity and openness towards the world,
determined to live together with mutual consideration and respect for their diversity,
conscious of their common achievements and their responsibility towards future generations,
and in the knowledge that only those who use their freedom remain free, and that the strength of a people is measured by the well-being of its weakest members,
adopt the following Constitution:

Of course this is the current version but earlier ones started with the same first line.

The cross (with these proportions), in a square flag (detail only shared by one other flag : the vatican's) is without a doubt the symbol of Switzerland, not of Christendom, but it's Christian heritage is obvious and recognized.

As for Victorinox's marketing ploy, it's rather pathetic to go for the 'well it looks like a plus sign, right?' but definitely understandable when you see that their market encompasses the whole world and all religions.

By the way, in muslim countries the red cross is called the red crescent.

[jaya_man]

More interesting information from you guys... just awesome


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Gath]

It seems most likely that just selling Wenger the parts at cost would have been the simplest and cheapest solution, entailing no heavy legal and bureaucratic work.

  Wenger could also quite probably have sued if Victorinox didn't either sell the parts without at least significant profit or license them to make them themselves.

So I find it likely the article oversells this as charity when it was more of a deft business move.